Vasily Petrenko ensures the proportions and sometimes wild discourse of this
symphony are held in perspective, says Geoffrey Norris

The chequered performance history of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony has lent it a mystique over and above all the interpretations of what his message – whether public or private – might have been in the other 14 symphonies. Viewing the score with the benefit of many decades’ hindsight, its gigantic proportions, stridency and uncompromising language would probably not have gone down too well with Soviet officialdom in the wake of the condemnation, via a Pravda editorial, of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in January 1936. But reports that Shostakovich himself was unhappy with rehearsals for the planned premiere in December that year cannot be discounted. Whatever the reason for his withdrawing the symphony, its rehabilitation in 1961 revealed a score of startling originality, for all its nods to Mahler, and one that has become part of the regular Shostakovich canon.

Vasily Petrenko’s vivid performance with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra comes as part of their complete Shostakovich symphony cycle for Naxos, a venture that has been distinguished by revealing insights and playing of terrific character and immediacy. With the Fourth, there is already some challenging competition in the catalogue, not least from Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on EMI, and Bernard Haitink with the Chicago Symphony on the orchestra’s own label.

Haitink has acknowledged that the Fourth “is a difficult work to handle and has to be kept on a leash”. Petrenko echoes that view in this performance; the proportions and sometimes wild discourse are held in perspective. But it also tempers punch with sensitivity, and in the finale, after what Haitink has called “all the hullabaloo”, the ending is as quiet as it is disquieting.